


A Wounded Soul

by fireweed15



Category: Book of Life (2014), Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Human AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 09:24:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3805201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireweed15/pseuds/fireweed15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid. – Michael Connelly, The Black Echo</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wounded Soul

**Author's Note:**

> TW: PTSD, suicidal thoughts; Written for Hurt / Comfort Bingo's April Amnesty Challenge: Crossovers [Prompt: Major Illness]

Nights were the hardest. 

Joaquín laid staring up at the ceiling, picking idly at the bedclothes. The ceiling fan blades turned lazily, but he didn't truly see them. His mind was exactly seven thousand, four hundred thirty-one miles away. 

Beside him, Ayame sighed in her sleep, shifted and wriggled under the blankets. Joaquín started to look at her out of the corner of his eye, but stopped himself when he remembered that he was still getting used to not having the vision in that eye. Instead, he turned his head and watched her steady breathing, almost envious of her and wanting to be in her place. He immediately regretted the thought and tried to pull it back in—for him to be in her place, she would have to be in his. As miserable as he was, he couldn't bear the thought of putting Ayame through his hell.

He sighed and turned to stare up at the ceiling again. He was lying on his back and it wasn't comfortable. He started to turn on his side, and a sudden overwhelming rush of vulnerability forced him back down.  _You're being a fucking idiot_ , he mentally chastised.  _Nothing will happen if you get comfortable._

But what if it did? Danger could come as easily to Stockton, California, as it did to Fallujah—and if it did, who would take care of Ayame?

_That's stupid and you know it._ His hands clenched into fists.  _Nothing's coming—and if something happened, 'Yame can take care of herself. She's tough._

But was it worth the risk? Who would look at Ayame, who was small and quiet and unassuming, and know that she could and would defend and care for herself?

He sighed again, slowly reaching out and taking Ayame's hand in his. The feel of her fingers in his grounded him, but only slightly, and had little effect on the fact that despite his exhaustion, he wasn't tired. Nights were the hardest, and this was shaping up to be no exception.

* * *

The bitterness of the coffee Joaquín sipped matched his dark mood. It was easier, though, to swallow both the drink and the bitterness and smile, especially when Ayame when she presented him with a plate of tamagoyaki and orange slices. "You know, you don't have to cook for me," he noted, not for the first time, as he reached up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.

"You would ask me to give up something that brings me joy?" she teased.

"I guess not," he replied, just as lightly, "since it makes you happy."

Ayame smiled warmly and brushed a kiss against his temple. "More coffee?" she offered, picking up his now empty mug.

"If you don't mind," he replied.

"Cream? Sugar?" she offered.

He shook his head. "Black."

"Expecting a long day at school?" Ayame asked, glancing over her shoulder as she reached for the coffee pot.

"You know fourth graders," Joaquín dismissed. "I'll need all the help I can get."

Ayame nodded solemnly as she started to pour. "Would you like some more for the road?"

"Please," he confirmed.   
  
Ayame simply  _hmm_ -ed in reply, and the conversation between them faded and eventually ceased. For a few moments, Joaquín felt the tension he carried in his shoulders melt off, and the sense of being at ease from Before (a time he wanted to cherish and work back up to) started to come back.

A loud, metallic  _pop_ cut through the air like a shot, and for a terrifying moment, the world felt as though it had been ripped out from underneath him. He jumped up, heart pounding, reaching for his sidearm, his throat all but closing when he found himself grabbing at nothing. Finally, he found his voice—"What the fuck was that?"

His eyes fell on Ayame, who held his coffee mug in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. "The… toaster?" she replied slowly, taken aback by the outburst. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he replied instantly, trying to shake the dread that threatened to overwhelm him. He took stock of his surroundings and realized that his chair had tipped backwards and clattered to the floor. Cheeks burning with shame, he bent to pick it up. "I'm sorry I scared you, 'Yame. Just got… startled."

"There's no need to apologize," Ayame soothed, bringing the coffee and toast over to the table and helping him right the chair. "Are you feeling well?" She laid her hands on his cheeks, and it took all his self-restraint to not flinch back from her touch. "Would you feel better taking a personal day?"

Could she feel his racing pulse through the superficial touch? "I'm fine," he replied, shaking his head.

"Do you promise?" she asked, her tone somber. 

God, why did she  _do this_ to him? It was such an easy question—and he knew he was going to have to fucking lie to her to put her mind at ease. He mustered up a warm smile and leaned down to kiss her cheek. "Promise."

* * *

Work, at least, was consistent, even working with fourth graders. Attendance, morning announcements, lunch counts—there was a sort of comforting monotony to it that Joaquín found soothing. After those first three tasks, the day varied in quality, but after the morning Joaquín had at home, he was determined to make it a good one.

First lesson on Tuesdays was a writing journal. Simple, right? "Today's journal is 'Where Will You Be in Ten Years?'" he started after allowing a few moments for his students to settle. "You'll all be nineteen or twenty, so think about—" He paused to turn to the SmartBoard and brought up the prompt and a list of possible sub-topics—"where you'll live, what kind of job you have or where you're going to school, who your friends are—"

"Mr. Mondragon?"   
  
The interruption came from Evangeline, one of his more outspoken students. To her credit, she'd had the patience to wait until he was (mostly) done with the instructions and raised her hand, so he turned to address her. "You have a question, Evangeline?"

"Where will you be in ten years?" she asked, leaning forward and gripping the front edge of her desk. A handful of her peers echoed the question, or else nodded in agreement.

Joaquin had to stop to consider the question. Once upon a time, the answer would have been easy—he'd have married Ayame and they'd be raising a family. Living out the goddamn American dream. Now though… The question gave him pause. Ayame was patient, but would that patience with his faults and shortcomings extend to something as heavy as  _marriage_? Would she even consider having a child with him now? Everything that had seemed so certain Before was now called into question.

If answering Ayame had demanded an on the fly answer, the need for a repeat performance was multiplied by twenty-five. Twenty-five pairs of eyes looked at him expectantly—and why not? They discussed journal prompts all the time. "I think," he finally managed, rubbing the back of his neck, "that I'm going to be happy."

Satisfied with the answer, the class opened their journals and held their pencils at the ready, waiting for the start of the ten-minute journal time. Joaquín nodded once and started the timer; the sound of pencils scratching at notebook paper serving as his backdrop, he sat back down at his desk, trying to rub at his temples in a way that didn't draw attention to himself but would at least stave off the dull but persistent throbbing that signaled the start of a migraine.

Lying to fourth graders—so much for a good day.

* * *

Joaquín never considered himself much of an actor, but he'd become a damn good liar.

By the time Saturday had come, he couldn't entertain the idea of doing much more than staying cocooned in blankets in bed and acting as though he didn't exist. The longer the week had dragged on, the more he looked forward to the prospect—until the question came. "Would you still like to go to the movies this weekend, Isamu?"

More than anything in the world, Joaquín wanted to say no, to cite his inability to be upright and functional as the reason he couldn't go—but it was impossible to deny Ayame, not when she asked so sweetly and used her affectionate nickname for him. (There was irony, Joaquín supposed, that the name she gave him meant  _bravery_ , but he tried not to think too hard about it as he forced himself through the motions of showering.)

He did a lot of that lately, he guessed—forcing himself through the motions. It wasn't what he'd wanted for himself, but it was what he deserved.

* * *

When he wrote, Joaquín favored longhand, as he found putting pen to paper and scratching out the words themselves easier and almost inherently soothing. On a normal day, at least. Now, all his attempts to get back into the habit of working on his novel had fallen hopelessly flat. That was normal, he tried to console himself, but as the rejected pages filled and eventually spilled out of the wastepaper basket at his feet, the effect was the opposite of soothing.

He started down at the blank page, tapping his pen against the desktop in an irritated staccato when there was a quiet knock on the office door. "Yeah?" he called, not looking up from the paper.

The door creaked open, and Ayame poked her head inside. "Joaquín?"

A sarcastic remark sprang to his tongue, but he swallowed it. Despite this, the reply he did verbalize did little to mask his annoyance. "What?" 

Ayame didn't address the shortness of the word, and if it bothered her, she didn't show it in that damnably inscrutable way that she had. "I made tea," she announced, stepping into the room with two steaming cups in her hands. "Would you like some?"

That was it? "No, thank you," Joaquín replied, looking back at the empty page again. The little bastard was taunting him, and he was sorely tempted to set the page—indeed, the whole draft of the book—on fire.

Now, standing beside the desk, Ayame did address the tone. "Are you alright?" she asked, setting both cups on the far edge of the desk.

"I'm fine," he said.

She nodded before posing a second question. "Is there something on your mind?"

"Why would there be?" he asked, trying to feign a casual tone.

He didn't succeed, which only spurred her to ask more questions. "You… seem troubled." She perched herself on an empty corner of the desk, right next to him. Normally, the closeness would have been delightfully intimate, charming; now, Joaquín found it presumptuous and annoying. "Something is bothering you."

"I'm just having a rough week," he dismissed, turning away from her as if to dig through one of his desk drawers. "It's  _fine_."

"It has…" Ayame paused, seeming to be choosing her words carefully, before laying her hand on his shoulder; the touch was feather light, but it felt as though her fingertips were burning his shoulder. "It has been longer than a week."

He wrenched his shoulder away from her hand and looked up at her, closing the drawer a little more forcefully than was necessary. "Then how long has it been, Miss Know-Everything?"

Ayame withdrew her still-outstretched hand, her eyes wide. "There is no need to call names," she said; her tone was no doubt meant to be diplomatic, but all Joaquín heard was condescension. "I am concerned. If I may continue, please?"

_No, you may not_ , he wanted to snap. "Hmm."

She nodded coolly before speaking again. "I noticed it first…" Her eyes drifted to her fingers, which twisted in her lap. "A while—after you came home—"

"So you think this is the army's fault?" he snapped. "Or do you mean that it's  _my_ fault?" 

"I did not say it was or was not  _anyone's_ fault," she replied defensively. "I only wonder if something happened to you—"

"Don't you fucking assume anything," Joaquín warned, his eyes darkening. "You don't know  _anything_ about what I went through!"

"I would if you told me!" she retorted, sliding off the desk. "I only want to help you!"

"What if I don't want your help?" he demanded. His hands clenched into fists, the only thing keeping him from outright pushing her away. "What if I want you to leave me alone?!"

"Don't yell at me, Joaquín Mondragon." For the first time in months, her voice was truly raised, her volume easily matching his. "What do you want me to do? Hmm? What do you want of me?"

She was giving him orders? Making demands of him? Where the fuck did the little  _puta_ get off? "You want to do something for me? Fine— _go to hell_! How's that for a start?"

Ayame reached out and snatched one of the cups, as though she meant to throw the still-hot tea in his face. Her hand trembled before she threw the cup at his feet, the porcelain shattering. Her expression frigid and lips pressed into a thin line, she turned and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her. 

Hands shaking, Joaquín seized the first thing within reach, the wastepaper basket, and threw it across the room. Crumpled up wads of paper littered the carpet, and the metal clattered as it hit the door. He barely heard it over the sound of himself shouting vile curses in both English and Spanish. Dissatisfied with the basket alone, he seized the dictionary on the corner of the desk and threw it across the room as well. Everything within reach—reference books, pens and pencils, office supplies, folders—was thrown in every possible direction. The impact as they hit walls and the floor and other object drowned out by wordless screams that made his throat ache.

Within ten minutes, the office was torn to pieces. Joaquín leaned on the desk, breathing heavily, sweat making his shirt stick to his back and running down his face in rivulets, and surveyed the damage. He thought it would have helped, but he found he felt… nothing. Only numbness. A photo frame, laying facedown on the desk, caught his eye; his vision tunneled around it, and he picked it up to inspect it. It showed a scene from their last Christmas before his tour of duty, Ayame settled comfortably in his lap with his arms wrapped loosely around her waist. Her eyes were on the gift in her lap, but his attention was on her as he nuzzled her cheek. It was a candid shot that captured one of the last happy memories he had, and it hadn’t escaped the rampage—the glass of the frame cracked in several places.

Somehow, seeing the spider web of broken glass over their portrait was the perfect metaphor for his situation.

* * *

The pillow in which Ayame had hidden her face was no longer cool, but oppressively hot and damp with tears, and she refused to lift her head from it. After all the screaming and banging coming from the study, the house was very quiet, and she couldn't decide if the silence was a blessing or stifling.

After a while, movement in the master bathroom adjacent caught her ear. Her brow furrowing, she strained to hear what it was—a burst of tiny splashes, followed by the toilet flushing. There was a sort of rhythmic quality to the sounds, which roused her curiosity just as much as the sounds themselves.

Ayame sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. After taking a moment to gather herself emotionally, she stood and made her way into the bathroom. 

She fully expected to find Joaquín to be the reason for the sounds, but all the same, seeing him wasn't an entirely pleasant experience. It was, however, an interesting sight. The medicine cabinet was open, most of the contents spread out on the counter. Almost methodically, Joaquín reached behind himself and unscrewed the lid of one of the bottles. He paused, his gaze meeting Ayame's, and mumbled a greeting before turning his attention back to the pill bottle in his hand.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I don't trust myself to not do something stupid," he replied simply. As he spoke, he tipped the pills into the toilet.

Ayame quirked an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" Even amid all of the quirks and strange behaviors from the past months, this was the strangest Joaquín had been acting in a long time.

"I don't trust myself—" he picked up another bottle and unscrewed the lid—"to not kill myself."

He said it so calmly, as though it were a perfectly natural thing to fear, that despite her anger at the way he'd spoken to her, the words sent chills down Ayame's spine. "Why do you say that?" she asked, forcing herself to keep her voice level.

If Joaquín heard the question, he didn't answer it. "I'm sorry, 'Yame," he mumbled. "I didn't… I shouldn't have said those things to you."

"Those things you said to me…" She paused to choose her next words very, very carefully. What did one do when they were trying to talk someone down? "They hurt."

"I know," he replied, nodding solemnly. "That's why I shouldn't have said them."

"Is there something I should know?" she asked, taking a small step into the bathroom.

Joaquín paused, seemingly not expecting the question. There was another pill bottle in his hands, and when he spoke, it was more to it than to her. "…I need help, 'Yame. I'm… I'm really fucked up."

Any residual anger she felt faltered and died, and she came to stand at his side. "Come with me," she murmured, working the bottle from his fingers. "We'll get something cool to drink and talk."

* * *

"I guess…" Joaquín wrapped his fingers around the can of Pepsi Ayame set in front of him. The cold bit at his skin, grounding him. "I guess I haven’t been right since I came back from my tour."

Ayame nodded as she sat across from him. "What do you mean?" she asked between sips of iced tea.

He tried not to feel like he was lying on a therapist's couch, or like he was being dissected. "I'm… always angry," he started, drumming his fingers on the table. "Every time something goes wrong or reminds me of being… back there, I feel like my head is going to explode."

"Have you mentioned this to your doctors?" Ayame said, reaching out to lay her hand on his.

Joaquín shook his head. "I always wrote my problems off as something at work or that happened earlier…" he admitted. "It's gotten worse lately. I don't know why."

"You always tell me it's not healthy to bottle things inside," she noted simply.

"What am I going to say?" He was upset, but his energy was spent—there was no way he could handle two emotional breakdowns in as many hours. "That I tried to rip my girlfriend's head off because she was worried about me? Or do I lead off with the fact that for months I thought I was going crazy?"

"You lead off by saying you are worried you have PTSD," Ayame encouraged. "That is what it sounds like to me."

Joaquín didn't answer at first. "I thought PTSD happened to other people," he finally admitted. "I thought I was going to get off easy."

Ayame smiled sadly and laced her fingers with his. "Do you think you will bring this up with a doctor?"

Joaquín stroked her fingers with his thumb, the action almost self-soothing. "I don't want to get you involved in this," he mumbled.

"I do not have to be there if you do," she replied.

He shook his head. "I don't want to get you involved in my… mental health," he clarified, having trouble meeting her eye. "You don't need to get involved if you don't want."

"I want to," she said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I want to help you in any way that I can."

For the first time in what felt like forever, a smile flickered across Joaquín's face. "What did I do to deserve you?"

Ayame smiled warmly and leaned across the table to kiss his eyes, both his good one and the patch covering its damaged twin. "If I described everything you ever did, we would never leave this table."


End file.
